ONCE again, there is talk of improving the ambulance service, with new ambulance stations to cut down on response times and paramedics to be able to treat people at the scene.
We ought to welcome the news, but this is an issue on which we find it hard to believe anything the Health Ministry says until we actually see it in place. This question has been going for over a decade, and the only thing that has been done, despites study after study, promise after promise, is to buy new ambulances – a small mercy for which we ought perhaps to be grateful.
Frankly, we might we might as well reprint an editorial from five years ago, merely changing the name of the Minister of Health, so little have things changed in that time.
It simply defies belief that, given the danger on the island’s roads, and given the constant political and public pressure to cut the number of traffic deaths, the issue of ambulance response appears to be so low on the agenda.
It’s hard to estimate how many deaths could have been avoided by a better ambulance service, but in 1996 the House Health Committee was told that 40 people died each year due to the island’s poor ambulance service, while a study by the Health Ministry in 2002 revealed that the number had increased to around 50 people a year. There is little reason to believe that the number has fallen since then.
A few weeks ago, a correspondent to this paper told how she tried to call an ambulance after a worker fell from scaffolding near her home. The emergency number was not answered, and when she called Paralimni hospital, she was told an ambulance could not come because the operator didn’t know how to get to the address.
This kind of response is a disgrace. In this case, the worker was eventually taken to hospital in a private car. Fortunately, his injury was not too serious, but what if someone has had a heart attack or is losing blood fast after an accident?
Detailed and costed plans for a paramedic service were submitted in 1995. They were left to gather dust. Pledges to act on the plans were made by the Health Minister in 1999, 2000, and 2002. They all came to nothing. Now reports suggest new ambulance stations and paramedic training are in the pipeline. Yet when we questioned the Health Minister, his responses were vague, and he made clear that in proposals still had to secure Cabinet approval.
We hope he will succeed, because with every week that passes, more people are dying whose lives might have been saved. It simply has to stop.
